The present invention relates generally to the field of publication/subscription in a distributed electronic network, and specifically to optimization of publication using an interest-aware overlay in a peer to peer publication/subscription operation over an electronic network.
In a peer to peer (P2P) network, a peer can communicate with other peers directly. Each peer typically includes client and server functionality. For example, a first peer may act as a client when sending a message to a second peer. The second peer may perform a function as a result of receiving the message and may return a response message to the first peer. Thus, the second peer acts as a server for the first peer.
Publication/subscription (pub/sub, sometimes referred to as “public/subscribe”) is a paradigm for supporting many-to-many communication in a distributed system. In a topic-based pub/sub system, messages or events are published by a content provider on abstract event channels called topics. Users interested in receiving messages published on a topic may send a subscription request to specify their topic or topics of interest. The topic-based pub/sub system then distributes each newly published message or event to all of the users that have expressed interest in the specified topic. Topic-based pub/sub systems are commonly used to support many-to-many communication in a wide variety of applications, such as enterprise application integration, stock market monitoring engines, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, and on-line gaming.